Wednesday, September 30, 2015

As some of you know I occasionally try to make use of my degree in computer science and program up some text based goodness based around some of my favourite game related things. Many times these have been exercises in futility every time I do I have gotten farther then the last time.

The reason I bring this all up is because some one felt there is a sort of lack of true D&D based computer games. Now I cannot say there is a lack myself as have played many great games like the goldbox series and many inspired rogue likes. What I feel is missing is something that really brings the feel of the OSR to the screen where you roll up your party with the stats the gods gave ya and make due with what you have. I shall try my hand at remedying this.

My aim is to take as much of the feel of Swords & Wizardry, add in a dash of randomly generated dungeons, and present it all in a text based world. This may never see the day of light but I feel this may be a fun project to take and and as it moves along I will be making further posts and possibly even having an open access to those who wish to give it a try ( I run a text based games server which is where this will be setup for testing).

Please leave your thoughts and comments in the section below, I would love to know what you think.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

This week I bring to you the green aligned viscous swarm. Believing completely in the ideology of might makes right and the strong rule only as long as they can remain the top predator. Constantly these phyrexians fight for dominance in their own version of the circle of life.

Blight Widows are completed spiders their chitin now a dark oily black. They prefer dark forested areas creating sticky black webs that resist any form of burning. A blightwidow can spray a stream of this webbing over a 10ft area and those in the area must make a dex check to dodge out of the way or be stuck by the webbing. Once stuck one can make a open doors check as if their strength was 2 points lower. They deliver a lethal poison bite.

Their bodies comprise of a slick oily hide that is extremely resilient to damage. Non-magic weapons have nearly no effect doing 5 less damage an attack. The hydra's 5 necks end in viscous maws which are always lashing out seeking targets to feed upon.

With the body resembling that of a woolly mammoth with the head like a skinned wombat the plaguemaw thunder in behind the shock troops sweeping up those who did not die from their initial wounds. They breath a 30ft cone of spores that if the target already has infected wounds take an additional 1d6 infected wounds as the spores spread additional necrosis on a failed saving throw.

Having no teeth the slagwurm looks to quickly snap its maw over its meal and devour it whole. To weaken its prey it thrashes about looking to impale with its long quills that cover its body. On a natural 20 or if it succeeds in its attack roll by 5 over the targets AC, it captures its prey and swallows them whole. While swallowed they take an automatic 1d10+3 damage a round. They may attack with a dagger or other small weapon against an AC9 (10)

Made to quickly scour forested areas of unwanted life, they quickly crash through brush and tangle hunting and devouring everything it sees and can catch. Hard to see as they resemble the foliage in which they hunt, they are anything but subtle and can be heard long before being seen.

Appearing like a serpentine insect the swarmlord is a terrifying sight to behold. In combat they thrash their opponents with a flurry of savage strikes with their claws or go for a lethal sting with their large stinger coming from their back. The most unnerving and unique ability however is every 5 rounds all opponents who have infected wounds must make a save or suffer from a spontaneously spawned insect horror burrow its way out of their flesh for every 5 points of infection damage they have dealing an additional 1d6 infected damage on its way out.

A titan of muscle, sinew, and nearly un-penetrable hide Verinclex is the epitome of survival of the fittest. Magic only has a 75% chance to work on him and magic cast within 50ft of him has only 50% chance to be cast successfully. Of huge size he tramples those of medium or smaller size for 2d6 damage if they fail their save.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

So the party having made it back to Beltaine had heard rumour from one of the wyvern knights that there was a rumoured castle to the east that was once home to some retired adventurers who most certainly had to have had passed away many decades ago(B1 in search of the unknown). He figured if it did exist there would be a good chance there may possibly still be something of worth left there. The group not having much to do while they wait for the mages guild to come up with a solution for the rogues change into a wolf decide to gear up and look for this castle.

They travel several hours east and after much searching found a castle which they presume is the one they was looking for. Weeds had grown all around it and creeping vines have grown up far and wide up the sides. There they found a gnome dresed in leather armor(a new pc who joined the group) having difficulty with the door. They greet each other and find the gnome is own his own mission to retrieve an item from this castle and as long as they are trust worthy they can accompany each other into the castle.

The barbarian takes a crack at the door and with a heavy creak pulls open the stuck door. Inside they find a long corridor that leads to another door with unremarkable stone walls leading down the pathway. They carefully search for traps and hazards making their way down to the door. Once more the barbarian opens the door and finds yet another long corridor but with alcoves branching out from each side. Finding these alcoves to be strange in how they are located he begins searching for anything out of place on the walls and succeeds in finding a hidden door on the right hand middle alcove. Intriqued but not yet ready to explore that way they continue down the path up where the stairs start and hear the ominous warnings from the magic mouths placed there by the former residents of the castle. The rogue and guard dog sniff by the stair way and notice something smells off and the guard dog notes it smells just like something that caused him to be itchy and irritable for a very long time (a giant tick) and begin growling low.

They decide to avoid the stairs for now and see where the hidden passage leads which they find several different paths to take. They opt to go south and follow it until they find 2 separate doors near the end of the passage. Sensing something might be up they draw there weapons and open the far door and stumble upon 2 troglodytes tearing apart a beautiful bed as if they are looking for something right before seeing the group and moving to attack. combat was quick and the gnome was right on the verge of death before the barbarian and wizard (with a critical hit with a dart) took out the trogs. Very quickly through the intervention of the cleric and the druid they were able to save their new companion. They then searched the room and found a single gold coin and a turtle shell cup they decided to take and left for the other door. All along the way they would stop and draw in chalk an arrow either on the wall or floor pointing in the direction they came from to aid in their leaving should they start to get lost. They follow the path and another door that lead to a carpenters room taking a few of the hand saws they found on the table and moved on. Shortly down the hall after turning around a corner the barbarian felt something fall on his head and bite him. Turned out to be 2 large centipedes and they both succeeded on their attacks. Amazingly he made both his saves and proceeded to grab one and stomp it to death. The gnome grabbed the other, threw it to the ground, and cut its head off with his short sword.

Now more concerned with what may be above they them follow the long corridor and eventually find another set of paths that lead north, south and into what looked to be a throne room. They spy to the north another room just in front of the throne room and decide to check it out to prevent possibly being ambushed while looking at the thrones. The barbarian, magic user, and his charmed orc step inside and find a evil looking idol on the far wall and a pit in the center. The magic user steps closer to the pit and shines his lantern up to the ceiling drawing in the attention of a couple of stirges. They dive bomb for him and the orc, the one aiming for the arc missing terribly and stunning itself on the slate floor(critical fumble). The other stirge found his mark and impaled the mage with its sucker. From here the rest of the party had a calmity of errors with 3 of the members critical failing and stunning themselves and or barely missing the thing as the mage flailed around helplessly as his blood was being drained. Eventually the mage fell backwards and hit his head on the end of the pit but the gnome was able to get behind the thing and slit its throat with his sword.

The cleric uses his last healing spell on the mage and they opt to check the throne room. They spend quite a bit of time checking out the marble thrones but nothing interesting happens so they head south and follow the path to a closed door with possibly anything behind it.

All in all the group had fun but the dice was aiming to kill them, it will be interesting to see how they fair in 2 weeks.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Today I thought I would present something a little different but could be useful in any old school campaign. For those situations when you want to introduce a unique NPC to the party to spice things up either while the party is travelling or possibly hanging out at a local watering hole, strange and unique people are all abound. Most are mundane people who are going about their business but some are specialist who may be looking for work or could be handy contacts in the future or possibly a villain on their own devious mission.

Monday, September 7, 2015

It has been a while since I have done a d100 table and felt that my game worlds deserts are a bit lacking in the populated department. So I present to you my latest in my series of d100 tables for your wilderness needs.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Last night I ran my first expedition into hex crawling, and honestly it was one of the better gaming nights we've had.

The
party was lost in the woods due to being chased by some elephant men
from a portal that opened behind the party the session before (a current
on going plot) and so they dived deeper into the wild in an attempt to
get away.

The Spend the night and I roll for an encounter and
using my d100 chart for forests came up with an abandoned cabin. Since
they did not search the area before resting for the night they did not
notice it through the thick trees until morning. They carefully search
it for traps finding nothing but alot of dust until looking inside the
old desk finding some old unused parchment and a unknown potion. They
collect the potion deciding to get it properly identified when back at
the mages guild and explore some more. They don’t find anything of real
interest and head back towards the cabin for a slightly safer days rest.
I had ended up rolling up another encounter and this time I got 2 black
bears, one inside the cabin the other wandering around in the trees not
too far off. The barbarian is the first to notice something is off and
goes to investigate and comes face to face with the black bear(the barb
is only surprised on a 1 out of 6) and so initiative is rolled.
Surprisingly the MVP of the battle was the trained war dog who finished
off the bear that came in from the woods, and then critical'ed using the
Critical hit/fumble chart from dragon 39 page (34) scoring what should
have been a decapitation, but I went for him darting past the group and
coming underneath the bears neck and tearing out its throat (still
instant death).

After calming down from the fight they start
skinning the bears taking a few claws as trophies and cook some of the
meat to keep from having to use up their rations and prepare for the
next day. They gather up their gear and decide to look for a way back
and maybe do some additional hunting along the way breaking up the party
sending the more hunter types (barb, rogue, the rogues guard dog, and
druid) leaving the cleric, magic user, and the magic users charmed orc
body guard to watch over camp.

The hunting group after a few
hours of searching over hear some giggling and splashing around,
following the sounds they come across a out cropping of 10 foot rocks in
a large circle and just the glint of light reflecting off the water and
onto the rocks. The rogue attempts to sneak up and take a peek at the
female sounding frolicking in the water and rolls a 1 on his save. He
enjoys the sight he sees all for about 5 seconds as he begins to sprout
fur and falls onto his hunches as his gear melds into his body and he
now understands his guard dog several times better, even if his vision
has just went to grey scale. The rest of the group watched in surprise
as their companion changed into a wolf. The druid at this point had a
darn good idea what the cause of this was and advised they leave and
leave now and don’t they dare take a further look across the water, a
nymphs beauty is not for mortals to behold and their friend was lucky to
be alive. They head back to camp and decide it would be best to trek
back to the kingdom as they had much to discuss with the mage's guild.

All
in all it was a good session, they was told the mages will consult
their library for anything useful and in the mean time they heard
rumours of a long abandoned castle to explore. It was a nice throw back
to how I first ran D&D 16-17 years ago flying by the seat of my
bands and just letting things go the way they go. Modules are still
there as possible locations but memories are certainly being created
just going out into the wilds.

About Me

I have been gaming off and on for close to 17 years now mostly playing D&D 3.0/3.5 with a little pathfinder and the occasional GURPS game here and there. Since finding my calling in the OSR with Swords & Wizardry I am looking to give back to the gaming community which has brought me many years of joy.
My other hobbies include collecting and playing retro gaming systems & games (which was new when I was a kid) and ham radio.